How we ended up in Houston today

So next week the three of us are going to Banff in Alberta, where J has a conference to attend, and last night it occurred to me: did Miriam need a passport to fly into Canada? I knew that she currently only needs her birth certificate to drive across the border, but a quick web search showed that, indeed, she would need a passport. It was late Thursday night when we figured this out, and we are scheduled to leave on Tuesday, so this did not look good at all. We briefly considered the possibility of flying into Seattle instead, taking a train to Vancouver, and then flying to Calgary, but that would end up costing us twice as much, not to mention being a ridiculous hassle.

( It turns out, however... )